Hundreds Attend Saddam Hussein's Burial in Town of Ouja, Where the Dictator Was Born | Fox News Hundreds Attend Saddam Hussein's Burial in Town of Ouja, Where the Dictator Was Born Published January 01, 2007 Facebook 0 Twitter 0 Email Print BAGHDAD, Iraq – Hundreds of Iraqis flocked to the village where Saddam Hussein was born on Sunday to see the deposed leader buried in a religious compound 24 hours after his execution. Dozens of relatives and others, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn in Ouja . A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby. "I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime," said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam's clansmen who attended the interment in the village just outside Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Some 2,000 Iraqis traveled to the village as well.

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said "the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood." "God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end," Natiq said. • Obituary: Saddam Hussein, 1937-2006 Police on Saturday blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance. Saddam was captured in an underground hide-out near Ouja on Dec. 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops. His burial place is about two miles from the graves of his sons, Odai and Qusai, in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003. The head of Saddam's Albu-Nassir's clan said the body showed no signs of mistreatment. "We received the body of Saddam Hussein without any complications.

There was cooperation by the prime minister and his office's director," the clan chief, Sheik al-Nidaa, told state-run Al-Iraqiya television. "We opened the coffin of Saddam. He was cleaned and wrapped according to Islamic teachings. We didn't see any unnatural signs on his body." On Saturday, Iraqis watched television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope. In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country. There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare on Saturday was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi , west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death Nov. 5. By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge. "He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp. Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us.

You have made us live in destitution." "I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times. "God damn you," the guard said. "God damn you," responded Saddam. New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam. Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood. Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site. Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad. The floor dropped out of the gallows. "The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope.

Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes." The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr. • Purported Video of Saddam's Hanging in Entirety Surfaces While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule. Some Arab governments denounced the timing the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha . Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid. Haider Hamed, a 34-year-old candy store owner in east Baghdad, wondered what would really change after Saddam's execution. "He's gone, but our problems continue," said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam's many brutal purges.

"We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite." At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday, and police said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. The U.S. military announced six more service members were killed — three soldiers and three Marines. The execution took place on the penultimate day of the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count. Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam's execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam's ouster in the U.S. invasion nearly four years ago. There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged.

But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster — and therefore didn't make much difference. "Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam." • Photo Essay | Saddam Timeline | Saddam's Atrocities. Saddam Hussein | Biography & Facts | Britannica.com Saddam Hussein, also spelled Ṣaddām Ḥusayn, in full Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti (born April 28, 1937, Al-ʿAwjah, Iraq—died December 30, 2006, Baghdad), president of Iraq (1979–2003) whose brutal rule was marked by costly and unsuccessful wars against neighbouring countries. Saddam Hussein appearing in a courtroom after his capture, Baghdad, Iraq. Karen Ballard/AP Early life Saddam, the son of peasants, was born in a village near the city of Tikrīt in northern Iraq. The area was one of the poorest in the country, and Saddam himself grew up in poverty.

His father died before he was born, and he went at an early age to live with an uncle in Baghdad . He joined the Baʿth Party in 1957. In 1959 he participated in an unsuccessful attempt by Baʿthists to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister , ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim ; Saddam was wounded in the attempt and escaped first to Syria and then to Egypt. He attended Cairo Law School (1962–63) and continued his studies at Baghdad Law College after the Baʿthists took power in Iraq in 1963. The Baʿthists were overthrown that same year, however, and Saddam spent several years in prison in Iraq. He escaped, becoming a leader of the Baʿth Party, and was instrumental in the coup that brought the party back to power in 1968. Saddam effectively held power in Iraq along with the head of state , Pres. Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr , and in 1972 he directed the nationalization of Iraq’s oil industry.

Presidency Iraq: Iraq under Ṣaddām Ḥussein Saddam began to assert open control of the government in 1979 and became president upon Bakr’s resignation. He then became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and prime minister, among other positions. He used an extensive secret-police establishment to suppress any internal opposition to his rule, and he made himself the object of an extensive personality cult among the Iraqi public. His goals as president were to supplant Egypt as leader of the Arab world and to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf . Saddam launched an invasion of Iran’s oil fields in September 1980, but the campaign bogged down in a war of attrition . The cost of the war and the interruption of Iraq’s oil exports caused Saddam to scale down his ambitious programs for economic development. The Iran-Iraq War dragged on in a stalemate until 1988, when both countries accepted a cease-fire that ended the fighting. Despite the large foreign debt with which Iraq found itself saddled by war’s end, Saddam continued to build up his armed forces. Saddam Hussein, 1983.

EU Considers Rules For Robots In August 1990 the Iraqi army overran neighbouring Kuwait . Saddam apparently intended to use that nation’s vast oil revenues to bolster Iraq’s economy, but his occupation of Kuwait quickly triggered a worldwide trade embargo against Iraq. He ignored appeals to withdraw his forces from Kuwait, despite the buildup of a large U.S.-led military force in Saudi Arabia and the passage of United Nations (UN) resolutions condemning the occupation and authorizing the use of force to end it. The Persian Gulf War began on January 16, 1991, and ended six weeks later when the allied military coalition drove Iraq’s armies out of Kuwait. Iraq’s crushing defeat triggered internal rebellions by both Shīʿites and Kurds , but Saddam suppressed their uprisings, causing thousands to flee to refugee camps along the country’s northern border. Untold thousands more were murdered, many simply disappearing into the regime’s prisons. As part of the cease-fire agreement with the UN, Iraq was prohibited from producing or possessing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Numerous sanctions were leveled on the country pending compliance , and those caused severe disruption of the economy.

Saddam’s continued refusal to cooperate with UN arms inspectors led to a four-day air strike by the United States and Great Britain in late 1998 (Operation Desert Fox). Both countries announced that they would support efforts of the Iraqi opposition to unseat Saddam, whose regime had grown increasingly brutal under UN sanctions, but the Iraqi leader barred UN weapons inspectors from entering his country. In the interim it became clear that Saddam was grooming one of his sons— Uday or Qusay—to succeed him. Both were elevated to senior positions, and both mirrored the brutality of their father. Moreover, Saddam continued to solidify his control at home, while he struck a profoundly defiant and anti-American stance in his rhetoric . Though increasingly feared at home, Saddam was viewed by many in the Arab world as the only regional leader willing to stand up to what they saw as American aggression. Thirty-foot- (9-metre-) tall bronze sculptures of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, on the … Jim Gordon, CIV/U.S. Department of Defense Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies In the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the U.S.

government, asserting that Saddam might provide terrorist groups with chemical or biological weapons, sought to renew the disarmament process. Though Saddam allowed UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq in November 2002, his failure to cooperate fully with the investigations frustrated the United States and Great Britain and led them to declare an end to diplomacy. On March 17, 2003, U.S. Pres. George W. Bush ordered Saddam to step down from office and leave Iraq within 48 hours or face war; he also indicated that, even if Saddam left the country, U.S. forces might be needed to stabilize the new government and search for weapons of mass destruction. When Saddam refused to leave, U.S. and allied forces launched an attack on Iraq on March 20. Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? The opening salvo of the Iraq War was an assault by U.S. aircraft on a bunker complex in which Saddam was thought to be meeting with subordinates. Although the attack failed to kill the Iraqi leader, subsequent attacks directed against Saddam made it clear that eliminating him was a major goal of the invasion. Always obstinate in his tone, Saddam exhorted Iraqis to lay down their lives to stop U.S.

and British forces, but resistance to the invasion soon crumbled, and on April 9, the day Baghdad fell to U.S. soldiers, Saddam fled into hiding. He took with him the bulk of the national treasury and was initially able to evade capture by U.S. troops. His sons, Uday and Qusay, were cornered and killed in Mosul on July 22, but it was not until December 13 that Saddam was finally captured. The once dapper leader was pulled, disheveled and dirty, from a small underground hiding place near a farmhouse in the vicinity of Tikrīt . Although he was armed, Saddam surrendered to U.S. soldiers without firing a shot. Saddam Hussein following his capture by U.S. forces in Tikrīt, Iraq, December 14, 2003. U.S. Department of Defense Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest In October 2005 Saddam went on trial before the Iraqi High Tribunal, a panel court established to try officials of the former Iraqi government.

He and several codefendants were charged with the killing of 148 townspeople in Al-Dujayl, a mainly Shīʿite town, in 1982. Throughout the nine-month trial, Saddam interrupted the proceedings with angry outbursts, claiming that the tribunal was a sham and that U.S. interests were behind it. The tribunal finally adjourned in July 2006 and handed down its verdicts in November. Saddam was convicted of crimes against humanity—including willful killing, illegal imprisonment, deportation, and torture—and was sentenced to death by hanging . Saddam’s half brother (an intelligence officer) and Iraq’s former chief judge were also sentenced to death. Days after an Iraqi court upheld his sentence in December 2006, Saddam was executed. Saddam Hussein appearing in a Baghdad courtroom, 2004. U.S. Department of Defense Saddam Hussein - Biography of the Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein Dictator of Iraq From 1979 to 2003 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein smiles January 1, 2001 while attending a military show in Baghdad, Iraq.

(Photo by Newsmakers/Getty Images) Updated July 01, 2016. Who Was Saddam Hussein? Saddam Hussein was the ruthless dictator of Iraq from 1979 until 2003. He was the adversary of the United States during the Persian Gulf War and found himself once again at odds with the U.S. in 2003 during the Iraq War. Captured by U.S. troops, Saddam Hussein was put on trial for crimes against humanity (he killed thousands of his own people) and was ultimately executed on December 30, 2006. Dates: April 28, 1937 -- December 30, 2006 Childhood of Saddam Hussein Saddam, which means "he who confronts," was born in a village called al-Auja, outside of Tikrit in northern Iraq. Either just before or just after his birth, his father disappeared from his life. Some accounts say that his father was killed; others say he abandoned his family. Saddam's mother soon remarried a man who was illiterate, immoral, and brutal.

Saddam hated living with his stepfather and as soon as his uncle Khairullah Tulfah (his mother's brother) was released from prison in 1947, Saddam insisted that he go and live with his uncle. continue reading below our video Overview of the Iraq War Saddam didn't start primary school until he moved in with his uncle at age 10. At age 18, Saddam graduated from primary school and applied to military school. Joining the military had been Saddam's dream and when he wasn't able to pass the entrance exam he was devastated. (Though Saddam was never in the military, he frequently wore military-style outfits later in life.) Saddam then moved to Baghdad and started high school, but he found school boring and enjoyed politics more. Saddam Hussein Enters Politics Saddam's uncle, an ardent Arab nationalist, introduced him to the world of politics. Iraq, which had been a British colony from the end of World War I until 1932, was bubbling with internal power struggles. One of the groups vying for power was the Baath Party, to which Saddam's uncle was a member. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the Baath Party.

He started out as a low-ranking member of the Party responsible for leading his schoolmates in rioting. However, in 1959, he was chosen to be a member of an assassination squad. On October 7, 1959, Saddam and others attempted, but failed, to assassinate the prime minister. Wanted by the Iraqi government, Saddam was forced to flee. He lived in exile in Syria for three months and then moved to Egypt where he lived for three years. In 1963, the Baath Party successfully overthrew the government and took power which allowed Saddam to return to Iraq from exile. While home, he married his cousin, Sajida Tulfah. However, the Baath Party was overthrown after only nine months in power and Saddam was arrested in 1964 after another coup attempt. He spent 18 months in prison, where he was tortured, before he escaped in July 1966. During the next two years Saddam became an important leader within the Baath Party. In July 1968, when the Baath Party again gained power, Saddam was made vice-president. Over the next decade, Saddam became increasingly powerful.

On July 16, 1979, the president of Iraq resigned and Saddam officially took the position. The Dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with a brutal hand. He used fear and terror to stay in power. From 1980 to 1988, Saddam led Iraq in a war against Iran which ended in a stalemate. Also during the 1980s, Saddam used chemical weapons against Kurds within Iraq, including gassing the Kurdish town of Halabja which killed 5,000 in March 1988. In 1990, Saddam ordered Iraqi troops to take the country of Kuwait. In response, the United States defended Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War . On March 19, 2003, the United States attacked Iraq. During the fighting, Saddam fled Baghdad. On December 13, 2003, U.S. forces found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in al-Dwar, near Tikrit. Trial and Execution of Saddam Hussein After a trial, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for his crimes . On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging.

Saddam Hussein - The Top 6 Worst Dictators Ever The Top 6 Worst Dictators Ever Muammar al-Gaddafi Saddam Hussein Childhood and Education: Saddam was born in the town of Tikrit to a family of shepherds His mother named him Saddam which in Arabic means "one who confronts". Saddam's mom remaired and his step father treated him harshly during his childhood. Saddam fled his family and returned to Baghdad to live with his uncle. Saddam attended a nationalistic high school in Baghdad. After graduating from high school Saddam enrolled in a Iraqi Law School for three years, but dropped out in 1957. He then joined the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party. Rise to Power: Three years later Saddam was involved in a unsuccesfull attempt to assisinate Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel-Karim Qassem. Saddam was shot in the leg during he attempt and he was later forced to leave the country, he fled to Egypt. He returned to Baghdad in 1963 when there was brief Ba'ath rule over the country. After, the Ba'ath party fell later that year Saddam was jailed.

Two years later Saddam escaped from prison and began to work with the Ba'ath party more. Saddam became involved in the party and rose through the ranks and later became the Vice President of the Ba'ath Party. It was said that he even created secret police to crack down on Ba'ath op-posers On July 16, 1979, al-Backr resigned as President of Iraq and Saddam took power immediately. As President of Iraq: Saddam's presidency was marked with two costly wars with Iran and the looting of Kuwait. I would first like to say the good things that Saddam did for Iraq. He started free education within Iraq. He even gave women the opportunity to get schooling which was unheard of in Iraq at the time. He also boosted Iraq's economy with more oil production. As well as good things Saddam has done many bad things. He publicly hanged Jews in Baghdad. Saddam invaded and looted the neighboring Kuwait for no reason. He killed many of his own people. Saddam had his troops gas the Kurds in 1988 (people that live in nothern Iraq). He also tried to commite genocide of the Kurds.

As you can see Saddam Hussein did very bad things, and some good things as president of Iraq. Death and Defeat: President George W Bush had a growing concern over the ruler of Iraq. The U.S viwied Saddam as a "bellicose tyrant who was a threat to the stability of the region". President Bush then claimed the Iraq possesed weapons of mass destruction. Iraq let U.N inspectors return to Iraq, but they found nothing. Next, in 2003 the U.S, led-invasion took place. Two weeks later U.S soldiers occupied much of Iraq with Saddam Nowhere to be found. Saddam was eventully captured on December 13 2003, and put on trial in June 30 2004. He was found guilty for 148 murders, torture of women and children and illegal arrest of 399 others. Facts and extras Saddam had two crazy son Uday Qusay. Saddam loved Joseph Stalin. Saddam had weapon collections with guns made of gold. Info courtesy of Wikipedia.com and history1900's.com. Images courtesy of looklex.com and new.unimaps.com. Video courtesy of Youtube.com.

Create a free website Saddam Hussein captured - Dec 13, 2003 - HISTORY.com Saddam Hussein captured Publisher A+E Networks After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is captured on this day in 2003. Saddam’s downfall began on March 20, 2003, when the United States led an invasion force into Iraq to topple his government, which had controlled the country for more than 20 years. Saddam Hussein was born into a poor family in Tikrit, 100 miles outside of Baghdad, in 1937. After moving to Baghdad as a teenager, Saddam joined the now-infamous Baath party, which he would later lead. He participated in several coup attempts, finally helping to install his cousin as dictator of Iraq in July 1968. Saddam took over for his cousin 11 years later. During his 24 years in office, Saddam’s secret police, charged with protecting his power, terrorized the public, ignoring the human rights of the nation’s citizens. While many of his people faced poverty, he lived in incredible luxury, building more than 20 lavish palaces throughout the country.

Obsessed with security, he is said to have moved among them often, always sleeping in secret locations. In the early 1980s, Saddam involved his country in an eight-year war with Iran, which is estimated to have taken more than a million lives on both sides. He is alleged to have used nerve agents and mustard gas on Iranian soldiers during the conflict, as well as chemical weapons on Iraq’s own Kurdish population in northern Iraq in 1988. After he invaded Kuwait in 1990, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in 1991, forcing the dictator’s army to leave its smaller neighbor, but failing to remove Saddam from power. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam faced both U.N. economic sanctions and air strikes aimed at crippling his ability to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. With Iraq continuing to face allegations of illegal oil sales and weapons-building, the United States again invaded the country in March 2003, this time with the expressed purpose of ousting Saddam and his regime.

Despite proclaiming in early March 2003 that, “it is without doubt that the faithful will be victorious against aggression,” Saddam went into hiding soon after the American invasion, speaking to his people only through an occasional audiotape, and his government soon fell. After declaring Saddam the most important of a list of his regime’s 55 most-wanted members, the United States began an intense search for the former leader and his closest advisors. On July 22, 2003, Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, who many believe he was grooming to one day fill his shoes, were killed when U.S. soldiers raided a villa in which they were staying in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Five months later, on December 13, 2003, U.S. soldiers found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six-to-eight-foot deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit. The man once obsessed with hygiene was found to be unkempt, with a bushy beard and matted hair. He did not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. A soldier at the scene described him as “a man resigned to his fate.” Saddam is now in Iraqi custody with U.S.

security and faces trial in front of a special tribunal on several criminal cases pending against him. The first began in October 2005. On November 5 of the next year, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was executed on December 30, 2006. Despite a prolonged search, weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq. Related Videos Saddam Hussein, horoscope for birth date 28 April 1937, born in Tikrit, with Astrodatabank biography - Astro-Databank Saddam Hussein Biography Iraqi politician, President of Iraq 7/16/1979. He invaded Iran on 9/22/1980 and tried to withdraw two years later but Khomeini kept it going. On 8/01/1990 the Iraqi army made a blitzkrieg takeover of neighboring Kuwait. The U.N. Security Council ordered a world-wide embargo on trade with Iraq to punish the Arab oil and military power for its invasion. Hussein's origins were disastrous.

His dad died before he was born, his mom was unable to care for him and he was raised by an uncle who beat him. He grew up with faith in nothing outside of his own control and a few trusted relatives - and even they have been in danger of their lives when his paranoia took over. Like Ivan the Terrible, he has taken vengeance on his own people in a path of total destruction. Years after the Persian Gulf wars, he kept testing U.S. limits, being coy about weapons and nibbling at borders. In early September 1996 he had a military buildup along demarcation lines but backed off when the U.S. White House issued a warning. The U.S., under George W. Bush's leadership, along with the British, under Tony Blair, attacked Iraq without United Nations approval on March 20, 2003. Rumors of Hussein's death in the first bombing proved false. During the course of the war, the U.S. had no idea of Saddam's whereabouts and in July 2003 issued a $25 million reward for his capture.

On July 23, 2003, in a raid on a house in Mosul, Iraq that began around 10 AM Baghdad time,, both of Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed. The Iraqi dictator was captured by U.S. soldiers in Ad Dwar about 15 KM south of Tikrit on December 13, 2003 at about 8:30 PM BAT. Hussein had been hiding in an underground bunker in a farm area near the Tigris River. After two years of legal proceedings, wrangling and trials in which a few lawyers, witnesses and a judge were killed by Hussein supporters, he was sentenced on November 5, 2006 to die by hanging for his 1982 role in a brutal attack on the town of Dujail. The former Iraqi dictator was hanged shortly after 6 AM local time in Baghdad on December 30, 2006 chart Placidus Equal_H. Source Notes Steinbrecher quotes INFOsophia No.15/ 1991 for 4:05 AM BGT "from an Arabic B.C.

seen by Barbault." In July 1998, LMR contacted Jean-Christophe Vitu to please ask Andre Barbault for confirmation and Barbault answered that his niece, Martine, had seen a document in Arabic that she was told was Husseim's B.C., but inasmuch as she did not read Arabic, it meant nothing to her. Barbault writes that he is "as skeptical as you." Pandit Ashutosh Ojha writes in AFA Bulletin 5/31/1991, "Hussein was born on the night of April 27 or the morning of April 28; the reported time is 3:35 AM Baghdad time (-3 hrs)." Bill Meridian called from Abu Dhabi, United Arabian Emirates on 11/09/1991, quotes a Lebanese astrologer who said that Hussein's mother went into labor on the night of April 27 and delivered on the early 28th; retified to 00:07 AM BGT. Helen Ederer quotes Herbert Yohag for 7:12 PM. T. Pat Davis spec 9:15 PM GMT.

Julian Cohen talked to a local University professor who had been formerly in the mid-east, who wrote to his contacts and came up with 8:55 AM: Julian does not vouch for authenticity. Caroline Gerard writes from Scotland that Nick Campion has data from Eric Mores for February 16, 1937, 8:55 AM. Frances McEvoy has a chart from a correspondent in France that gives 10:30 AM. Grazia Bordoni writes in March 1998, "I read in the newspaper that he was born in a Bedouin tribe where no one registers birthdates; not only the time, but the date is also unsure." Transit 7/1998 gave February 17, 1937 for Hussein, but also noted that Iraq had celebrated his 61st birthday on April 28.

Marion March quotes Jeani Lewis on email 4/28/1999, "Charles Osgood on radio this morning reported that 'This evening at 5:00 PM in Iraq, a new water dam is being opened, dedicated to Hussein's birthday at the exact time of his birth, 5:00 PM, 1937, according to his older son.'" (April 28, 1937, Tikrit, Iraq, 43 E.42, 34 N.36.) Tim Rubold reports, "At the UAC Conference in D.C. (Crystal City, VA), I think it was 1992, Joan Quigley had Saddam on her chart sheet handouts. Due to her connections she may just have something.

Anyway, she give the usual Apr 28, 1937, Tikrit, Iraq, with 1:23 PM GMT (local would be 16:23, 4:23 PM)." Carol McKay wrote (11/2001), "I did some research into the Islamic calendar, which can be referenced at: ~tawfig/convert/ and came up with an entirely different birth date than previously used. See what you think: maybe it's worth consideration. Fact: Iraq celebrated Saddam's 61st birthday on April 28, 1998.

Analysis: If we assume Iraq used the Islamic calendar, then his birth date wouldbe calculated as follows: April 28 1998 = 1 MuHarram 1419 Therefore, Hussein was born 61 Islamic years earlier on 1 MuHarram1358, calculated as follows: 1419 - 61 =1358 1 MuHarram 1358 = 21 February 1939 Thanks for your time and best wishes." Ananda Bagley sends the following on 3/23/2003: "This is an edited extract from 'Saddam Hussein: the Politics of Revenge,' by Said K. Aburish, published by Bloomsbury. According to Saddam himself, he ws born on April 28, 1937. In 1980 this date was made a public holiday, an occasion for mass celebrations and several days of non-stop TV coverage--asponsored renewal of the loyalty of the people to their leader. But the Iraqi writer Dr Hamid Al Bayati casts doubt on this assertion and has produced a birth certificate dated July 1, 1939.

Many Iraqis admit the possibility that Saddam's actual date of birth may differ from the recorded one. Inhabitants of villages such as Al Awja, Saddam's supposed birthplace, very often failed to register births until much later, if at all. But that would make people appear younger, and therefore offers no explanation for the discrepancy in Saddam's case". "The more likely reasons for changing his date of birth are social and political. It could have been done when he married his first wife and first cousin on his mother's side, Sajida Khairallah Tulfah. Sajida was born in 1937, and Saddam could have changed or invented the official record of his birth to conceal his marriage to an older woman - in Arab society an unusual event that is still frowned upon. Alternatively, the alteration could have been made later, when Saddam was a contender for his country's leadership: an older candidate would have a better chance of winning." "It would be in character for Saddam to try to overcome the hurdle of being too young to lead.

But whether born in 1937 or 1939, he was, at most, 32 years old in 1969 when he became head of his country's dreaded security apparatus, as well as deputy secretary general of the Ba'arth party and Iraq's vice-president and heir apparent. A remarkable achievement anywhere, it was even more so in traditionalist Iraq". "His exact date of birth aside, Saddam was born to Subha Tulfah Al Musallat and one Hussein Al Majid, already absent and presumed dead at the time of Saddam's birth. His mother lived near the town of Tikrit until her death in 1982". In July 2003, Kerstin Bylund-Paulsson writes, "Have just finished reading a book called "Saddam--The Secret Life" wirtten by Con Coughlin, an award winning journalist who has written about the Middle East for 20 years. Page 92: 'Born about the same time as Saddam in 1935, Shaikhly came from a distinguished Baghdad family whose ancestors had been responsible for administering Baghdad during the Ottoman Empire.

Saddam, who had no idea of his own birth date, had taken Shaikhly's birthday, April 28, for his own.' Shaikhly was one of the main ideaologists in the Baath party. Coughlin also calls into question the year of Saddam's birth. This would leave us astrologers with no date at all with which to work." Categories Traits : Personality : Difficult/ mean spirited Passions : Criminal Perpetrator : Executed Passions : Criminal Perpetrator : Homicide many at once Passions : Criminal Perpetrator : Terrorist Passions : Criminal Perpetrator : Torturer/ Sadist Vocation : Politics : Heads of state Notable : Famous : Historic figure BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saddam is buried in home village Saddam is buried in home village Saddam Hussein's body was handed to clan leaders for burial Final moments Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hanged for crimes against humanity on Saturday, has been buried in the village where he was born 69 years ago. In a sparsely attended ceremony in Awja, in the Tikrit region north of the capital, the former Iraqi leader was laid to rest in a family plot.

His sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US troops in 2003, are also buried there. New video of his execution posted on the internet, shows he exchanged taunts with onlookers from the gallows. Just hours after his execution, Saddam Hussein's body was reportedly flown to Awja aboard a US aircraft and handed to clan leaders for burial. In Iraqi town where Saddam Hussein was captured, the man who hid him speaks up - The Washington Post In Iraqi town where Saddam Hussein was captured, the man who hid him speaks up The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! By Kevin Sullivan By Kevin Sullivan August 15, 2012 Follow @sullivank Alaa Namiq doesn’t want to talk about it. Or he’s dying to. It’s hard to tell. One minute he’s shaking his head, stone silent. Then he starts bragging about it and he won’t stop talking.

“I dug the hole for him,” he says, his eyes burning with pride. “The hole,” known to the world as the “spider hole,” is the tiny underground bunker on Namiq’s farm where former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. soldiers on Dec. 13, 2003. Namiq and his older brother Qais have rarely spoken publicly about how they helped hide the world’s most sought-after fugitive for nearly nine months after the U.S.-led invasion. But now , sipping tea in the modest little restaurant he opened this summer, a couple of football fields away from “the hole,” Alaa Namiq seems willing. A map showing Saddam Hussein’s hometown and where he was captured. (The Washington Post) Maybe enough time has passed. Maybe few have asked. But for whatever reason, Namiq now folds his tall, broad-shouldered frame into a little plastic chair, tugs on a cigarette and talks about hiding the man his family had known for decades. “He came here and he asked us for help and I said yes,” says Namiq, 41, wearing a long white dishdasha robe.

“He said, ‘You might be captured and tortured.’ But in our Arab tribal tradition, and by Islamic law, when someone needs help, we help him.” Hussein was born in a village near Tikrit, just north of this little town on the banks of the Tigris River. When the U.S. military was searching for him, it became convinced, correctly, that he would find shelter among his Tikriti clansmen in these lush orchards of date palms and orange and pear trees. Namiq says he and Qais were arrested along with Hussein and spent a miserable six months in Abu Ghraib prison. Once a driver and an aide to Hussein, he has spent the past few years driving a taxi, finally saving enough to open his family restaurant a few weeks ago. At his restaurant on the riverbank, Namiq greets an American reporter graciously, offering grilled chicken and sweet tea on a sweltering evening. The restaurant is a small cinder-block shack, with a couple of grills and a few plastic tables set outside. Four of his brothers cook and wait tables for customers watching a big flat-screen TV showing Turkish dramas and men’s volleyball.

“I won’t tell you everything,” Namiq says, over and over, during the course of a couple of hours. “Someday I will say all I know. Maybe I will write a book. Maybe a movie. But I won’t tell you everything.” Then he starts talking. Namiq says his family, mainly he and Qais (who declined to be interviewed), helped move Hussein among various houses in the area after the March 2003 invasion. Hussein never used a phone, he says, knowing that the Americans were listening for his voice. Namiq says that Hussein read and wrote extensively, prose and poetry, and that his writings were confiscated by the U.S. troops who captured him. Namiq says Hussein wrote to his wife and daughters but he never saw them. His only visitors were his sons Uday and Qusay — Namiq says he helped arrange their secret trips to the farm. Hussein released several fiery speeches during the time he was in hiding, exhorting his supporters to fight the Americans. Namiq says he and Hussein recorded them together on a small tape recorder.

Knowing the Americans would be analyzing the recordings for clues to Hussein’s whereabouts, Namiq says he once drove 10 miles to the city of Samarra, parked on the side of the road and recorded the sounds of urban traffic. “I wanted to make the Americans feel dizzy and confused,” he says. Namiq clearly still reveres Hussein, who was hanged in 2006 . “Saddam knew there would be a day that he would be captured and executed,” Namiq says. “In his heart, he knew that everything was gone and that he was no longer president. So he started something new — jihad against the occupiers. He sacrificed everything he had, including his two sons, for the sake of the country.” Namiq says that when he was held at Abu Ghraib, U.S. soldiers — including a female interrogator who told him he looked like actor Tom Selleck — questioned him daily about weapons of mass destruction and the hiding places of top aides to Hussein. He says that his cell was kept dark 24 hours a day and that guards threw in buckets of water to keep it constantly wet. He says he was hooded and beaten, and bitten by guard dogs.

He was submitted to mock executions, he says, and constant, deafening rock music. “I endured the dogs and the torture, but I couldn’t stand that music,” Namiq says, without a trace of humor in his deep voice. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said that because records of individual prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003 would be difficult to retrieve, military officials could not immediately confirm Namiq’s arrest or detention. A spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command said that most details of Hussein’s capture remain classified. Hussein’s attorney, Khalil Dulaimi, quoted the former dictator in a 2009 book as saying that he had known the Namiq family since 1959 and that they had hidden him. In the book, Qais Namiq is accused of eventually turning Hussein in to the U.S. troops, which Alaa Namiq vehemently denies. The Namiq family has become something like royalty in Dawr for sheltering a local tribesman who is still idolized by many here. “We consider it a heroic act,” said Col. Mohammad Hassan of the Iraqi National Police, who is stationed in Dawr.

“This act doesn’t concern this family only, but it represents all the citizens of Dawr because this city embraced Saddam.” Hassan said that if the people of Dawr felt differently, the Namiq family would not have been able to continue living here. He said the family members were already well respected because they had worked for years as cooks and fishermen for Hussein. “Now,” he said, “the people of Dawr respect and appreciate this family even more than before.” Hussein was buried just up the road in Auja, the village where he was born. Aware of the former dictator’s enduring popularity around here, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered his grave site closed to the public to keep it from becoming a shrine . On the farm where Hussein was captured, the “spider hole” sits at the base of a date palm tree, covered with a four-foot-square concrete cap, largely forgotten beneath dirty cages filled with doves and parakeets. Chickens and dogs roam the grounds, and huge orange carp swim in two ponds. On a midsummer evening, the trees are so full that with every strong breeze, small yellow pears fall like raindrops.

Across the narrow road at his restaurant, Namiq excuses himself and gets up from the table. He walks around the dirt courtyard, table to table, greeting customers who all know him by name. More world news coverage:

Question: Saddam Hussein was born in which town?
Answer: Tikrit